EDITORIAL: The mentally ill need access to treatment

Since the tragedy in Newtown, much of the focus for what to do to prevent another of these senseless slaughters has focused on guns -- their easy availability and the lethality of assault rifles in particular.

But the issue of getting treatment for the dangerously mentally ill is gaining its own legs.

It has yet to be firmly established that Adam Lanza was in the grips of a mental illness when he killed his mother, then drove to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and began slaughtering children and any adult who got in his way. Today, we will go out on a limb and accept that he was.

It has been suggested that part of Lanza's motivation for these acts was the knowledge that his mother was working to have him committed to some sort of mental health facility.

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In this country, it is far too hard to do so and that needs to change.

In the 1960s America moved to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill under the belief that too many people were being locked up in psychiatric hospitals who didn't need to be. Getting these people back into the communities they came from and out-patient treatment became a civil rights issue. And there was much merit to the effort. Unfortunately, there wasn't the money. Neither was there enough thought given to that amount of lethal violence a small percentage of the mentally ill can inflict on society.

We are now at a point where we have fewer beds in psychiatric hospitals on a per-capita basis than we did in 1850. Having deinstitutionalized the mentally ill from hospitals, we are reinstitutionalizing them in prisons.

There are three times more seriously mentally ill people in jail than in hospitals, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Being in jail, however, doesn't mean that they aren't getting treatment. They are, though many of these people would be better off in a more therapeutic setting.

Delaware County prison does very credible job in treating those inmates with mental health issues. But there are only so many beds.

More and more families who have to deal with the heartbreak and violence of mentally ill family member are starting to learn how to work the system. Many now are filing charges when a son or daughter acts violently or dangerously in their homes. Getting their children arrested can be the first step in getting them help. But this is a ridiculous way to run mental health system.

Last year, after Jared Loughner's killing spree that left seven dead and Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords disabled for life, we editorialized on the need to change the standard for committing mental patients.

In that editorial we mentioned the 2006 murder of Amy Bruce at the hands of her mentally ill son. He was ordered released from a psychiatric facility in Maine at the behest of Disability Rights Center and despite the concerns of his doctors and parents.

Two months later, after getting the mail one morning, he killed his mother with a hatchet. Will Bruce would say later that at the moment of the killing he was under orders from the pope to kill his mother because she was an al-Qaida terrorist.

"Why do mothers die?" asked Will's father, Joe. "Because they love their kids enough to continue to care for them when nobody else will help. Amy never gave up on him."

It is unfair and dangerous to ask the Amy Bruces of the world to suffer the consequence of laws that make it so hard to keep their troubled children in treatment.

The legal standard for getting an adult committed in this state - and many others - is too high. You have to prove that the person is a "clear and present" danger to himself or others. That standard should be lowered slightly to "a substantial reason to believe ..."

As we said at that time, such a change won't keep every such tragedy from ever happening again. "But it would give families, communities, law enforcement and mental health professionals a better chance at intervening and helping some of our most troubled and needy citizens."

Making it more difficult for the seriously mentally ill to get guns is important. Making it easier to get them treatment is just as necessary.